Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 4 (1846).djvu/116

1282 round and smooth galls are often seen on the small twigs of the white oak. They are nearly as large as bullets, of a greenish colour on one side, and red on the other. They approach in hardness to the Aleppo galls, and perhaps might he put to the same use. Each one is the nest of a single insect, which turns to a fly and eats its way out, in June nnd July, having passed the winter as a chrysalis, within the gall, lodged in a clay-coloured egg-shaped case, about three twentieths of an inch long, and with a brittle shell. These little cases appear to be cocoons, but are not made of silk or fibrous matter. Similar cocoons are found within many other galls, and I have some which were discovered under stones, and were not contained in galls, but produced gall-flies, the insects having left their galls to finish their transformations in the ground. The name of the gall-fly of the white oak is Cynips oneratus, Harris. Galls of the size and colour of grapes ere found on the leaves of some oaks. Each one contains a grub which flnishes its transformations in June. The winged insect is my Cynips nubili- pennis. One of our smallest gall-flies may be called Cynips seminator, or the Sower. She lays a great number of eggs in a ring-like cluster around the small twigs of the white oak, and her punctures are followed by the growth of a rough or shaggy red- dish gall, as large sometimes as a walnut. When this is ripe, it is like brittle sponge in texture, and contains numerous little seed-like bodies, adhering by one end around the sides of the central twig. These seeming seeds have a thin and tough hull, of a yellowish colour ; they are egg-shaped, pointed at one end, and are nearly one-eighth of an inch long. The gall-insects live singly, and undergo their transformations, within these seeds ; after which, in order to come out, they gnaw a small hole in the hull, and then easily work their way through the spongy ball wherein they are lodged. It has been observed that no tree in Europe yields so many different kinds of galls as the oak. Those which I have described are not all that are found on oaks in this country, and they seem to be sufficiently distinct from the galls of European oaks. Round, prickly galls, of a reddish colour, and rather larger than a pea may often be seen on rose bushes. Each of them contains a single grub, and this in due time, turns to a gall-fly, which may be called Cynips bicolor, the two-coloured Cynips. Great numbers of Cynips dichlocerus, or the gall-fly with two-coloured antennae are bred in the irregular woody galls, or long excrescences, of the stems of rose-bushes. The small roots of rose-bushes and of other plants of the same family, sometimes produce round- ed, warty, and woody knobs, inhabited by numerous gall-insects, which, in coming out, pierce them with small holes on all sides. This species has been named Cynips semi- piceus. The Cynips bicolor above-mentioned seems to be identical with Rhadites Rosas that inhabits many parts of Europe, whence it may have been introduced into America. — Francis Walker.

Note on the capture of an Hermaphrodite specimen of Anthophora retusa. — On the 17th of April, 1845, as I was walking with a friend on the slopes of our downs, he caught a specimen of Anthophora retusa, which proved to be an hermaphrodite resem- bling the specimen caught by Mr. Smith, and figured * The Zoologist,' (Zool. 890) the only difference being that the male part of my specimen is on the right side, and that of Mr. Smith's on the left, and perhaps the under side of my specimen shows more of the male, and the upper side less than Mr. Smith's. — W.H.L. Walcott; Clifton, March 5th, 1846.

On the use of moisture in collecting Coleoptera. — A few years ago I tried the follow- ing experiment with great success, the summer being a very hot and dry one. I care- fully removed from the trunk of a decaying ash-tree, on which I had captured a speci-